SPD push to resume Afghanistan deportations after Mannheim attack ++ New report gives recommendations on potential China tariffs, subsidies for green industry
Tuesday, 4th June
Good morning.
The political fallout continues after a horrendous knife attack in Mannheim, in which a 29-year-old policeman was killed by 25-year-old Afghan migrant.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung now reports that, in reaction to the attack, the SPD will push to deport migrants who commit serious crimes to their countries of origin, including unsafe countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. FAZ has seen evidence that the interior ministry, run by the SPD’s Nancy Faeser, is working ‘intensively’ on finding ways to implement such a policy.
Despite concerns from the Greens, including the suggestion that the Taliban would demand payment to accept deportees from Germany, FAZ's Mona Jaeger says that:
''The SPD seems determined. A new assessment of the situation (in Afghanistan) from the Foreign Office as a basis for justification would be nice, but it is not a prerequisite for deportations to Afghanistan. The SPD believes that it is almost impossible to explain to citizens why those who have committed a serious criminal offence should be allowed to remain in Germany."
COMMENT: The public reaction to this attack has clearly been visceral enough to produce such a hasty response from the SPD — see yesterday’s post for more on the reaction from papers such as the tabloid BILD. It will be key to watch whether the AfD’s vote gains a boost in next week’s EU elections, having been in serious trouble over recent weeks, though BILD today reports no jump in the latest polls for the far right.
The tariff dilemma
There is an interesting piece in today’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s leading left-liberal broadsheet. The article previews a new study by the liberal German Economic Institute (IW) into how leaders should approach the problem of trying to reduce dependence on Chinese imports while maintaining the pace of the energy transition, two key objectives of the governing Green Party led by Robert Habeck.
It’s safe to say the IW, traditionally a supporter of orthodox free trade, is uncomfortable with the ‘new normal’ of state-supported national competition growing around them. They take an approach of ‘as much as necessary, as little as possible’ to the question of tariffs and subsidies to compete with China.
Critical raw materials and goods such as life-saving pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, vital to the life of the country, should be left well alone by any tariffs.
The idea of using state subsidies to create domestic suppliers for things currently made in China is given careful treatment: a ‘watering can’ approach to subsidies could overwhelm the state budget and turn the risk of market failure into one of state failure, warns IW economist Jürgen Matthes.
Subsidies for new domestic producers are suggested to be either a last resort or very well thought through— reserved for areas of industry where high-tech, innovative Germany and Europe might compete, such as EVs, wind turbines, ‘electrolysers’ (me neither) and some semiconductors. Otherwise, better to build up new supplies with ‘friendly countries’ and emerging economies through— you guessed it— free trade and commodity agreements.
COMMENT: This sums up the position of German strategic thinking at the moment quite well. The problem has been identified (the basis of German ‘geoeconomic’ policy is quickly disappearing), but the proposed solutions remain largely the same: more free trade with other parts of the world, and do as little as possible to affect trade with China.